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After an outcry, Google says that showing Polymarket bets alongside legitimate news sources on Google News was an “error.”
“Google News is designed to show sources that create content about current issues, events, and important topics, and we have policies for sites to be eligible to appear,” the company told The Verge. “This site briefly appeared in Google News in error, and it is no longer surfacing in News.”
The drama started when Futurism noticed that the tech giant had started showing Polymarket bets alongside actual news articles, often appearing as large blocks that contained links to numerous gambling opportunities on the service.
The bets often appeared in the “For you” section of Google News, which is tailored to a user’s personal interests. In one instance, it was even the very top result, as with this bet on the price of Bitcoin.
In our testing, Polymarket bets were also showing up on the Google News home page.
But links from the prediction market were popping up all over Google News, including in searches. In further tests, looking up “will ships transit the strait,” referring to the Strait of Hormuz, returned numerous credible sources like Financial Times, The Guardian, and Reuters. Just below them, however, was a Polymarket bet on the number of ships that would be allowed to pass through the critical oil passageway.
When searching “Polymarket” in its search bar, Google News also allowed users to choose it as a “source,” directing them to a page that aggregates other Polymarket hits. It’s not the only non-news site that was selectable as a source — looking up “Reddit” and “X” offers the option, too — but searching for “Kalshi,” another prediction market and Polymarket’s main competitor, didn’t give the option to use it as a source.
It’s unclear when Polymarket bets began crowding Google News, but it appears to be a recent development. A handful of complaints on social media go back to around the same date in late March. Polymarket bets were also appearing in the News section of a Google search, and at least one post reporting this goes back to January.
In November, the search giant announced a deal with Polymarket and Kalshi to feed their prediction data into its finance platform; it’s unclear if Polymarket’s inclusion in Google News had anything to do with that partnership.
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